Introduction to Sports Psychology: (chp.

1)
● Sports and exercise psychology = interdisciplinary scientific and applied field that
embraces the integration of sport science and psychologic knowledge
● Positive psychology = focuses on understanding processes to enable people and groups
to thrive
○ Improves performance, well being
● ABC acronym
○ A = Affect/emotion
○ B = Behaviour
○ C = Cognition
● Situational factors to behaviour
○ coaches/leaders, teammates, opponents, referees, organizations, fans
○ Significant others, playing conditions, equipment, weather
● Person related factors
○ Physical skills & abilities, personality, identity, cognitive dispositions, emotion
regulation, etc.
● Ethics = concerned w/ matters of right or wrong
○ Refers to parameters of relationship btw. Consultants, athletes, and/or team
○ Ethical responsibility = to best help athletes and do not harm them
○ Code of ethics (4 guiding principles)
■ 1 = respect for dignity of persons
● Reinforce moral rightness regardless of gender, culture, etc.
● Respect privacy, freedom to consent, confidentiality
■ 2 = responsible caring
● Minimize harm and maximize benefits
● Must work w/in range of competence
■ 3 = maintaining integrity in relationships
● Be objective and avoid bias
● Avoid conflicts of interest
■ 4 = responsibility to society
● Develop knowledge through inquiry
● Caring for person must be #1 priority
● Evidence Based practice = uses best available evidence to inform decision making and
service delivery
○ Maximizes benefits and minimizes harm
○ Content needs to be considered like
■ Client characteristics, cultural backgrounds, and treatment preferences
● Social constructs = things that we cannot see or touch (anxiety, confidence)
○ Can see the symptoms of them
● Variable = scientific construct that can be assigned a specific value to be counted
○ Must be able to change overtime and through ppl.
■ Ex. christine wants to exercise, but experiences body anxiety in public
● Body anxiety is the variable
 ○ Specific measurement (anxiety scale) used to measure the
construct
○ Independent variable = variable the researcher manipulates
■ Cause of the change in dependant variable
○ Dependent variable = effect of the independent variable
● Research hypothesis = educated guesses about nature of relationships among scientific
constructs given specific conditions
● Theories = organizing framework that explains aspects of the natural world
● Model = visual depiction of a theory
● Empirical evidence = acquired data from experiments to support the hypothesis
● Quantitative research
○ Quantifies the amount of a particular variable
○ Tests theories by examining relationships among variables
● Qualitative research
○ Captures participant’s perspective in particular setting
○ Detailed info and level of understanding not found in quantitative data
● Mixed methods research = study using concept of both quantitative and qualitative
research
● Confounder = third variable responsible for the changes of the other variable
● Correlation = a relationship between variables
● Causation = variables causes an outcome
○ Three key characteristics
■ Cause comes before effect
■ No other factors affect the outcome
■ Cause must be related to outcome

Personality in sports and exercise psychology: (chp. 2)

● Personality research examines the psychological characteristic that makes people
similar or different from each other
● Personality = overall organization of psychological charact. that differentiates us from
others
○ Leads us to act consistently across time and situations
○ Uniqueness in humans
■ Doesn’t change quickly
● Disposition = broad, pervasive, encompassing way of relating to specific types of people
or situations
○ Ex. being competitive, motivational, etc.
● Trait = relatively stable characteristic/quality that may represent a portion of one’s
personality
○ Combination of traits reflect the person’s personality
○ Typically how you feel, think, behave
○ Relatively stable overtime and context
● Physical state = how you feel, think, behave at the moment
○ Can change from moment to moment
 ● Four I of personality
○ Identity = behaviours based on character That defines a person’s personality
○ Indiv. Differences = personality reflects person’s uniqueness
○ Internal Determination = personality is concerned w/ behaviours influenced by
internal locus of causation
○ Integrated self = personality focuses on whole person
Personality Theory
● Hollander’s 1967 model of personality
○ Target model in which the center is the psychological core that rarely changes
○ Outer parts are typical responses and role-related behaviours that can change
per moment
○ Target surrounded by social environment factors that can affect outer parts of
target
○ Problem = very descriptive and difficult to test
■ Doesn’t provide direction in the specifics in personality and how it can
predict downstream behaviour
● Personality theories in general
○ Consider motives, emotions, thinking, and behaviours
■ Factors that drives us and organizes emotional and cognitive experience
○ Recognize continuity of personality across situations and lifespan
● Trait approach
○ Implies consistency of behaviour from one situation to next
○ Generalizability of behaviour btw. Different context
■ Expect to see similar behaviour in different situations
○ Concludes that ppl. Have certain traits that influence behaviour
● Big five trait model of personality (five factor model)
○ Suggest all people can be described in terms of prevalence to the five global
factors
■ Openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism
● OCEAN acronym
○ Called big five because they subsume traits within them
■ If they score high in openness, they score high in the traits within the big
factor
How personality develops
● Humanistic approach
○ Focuses on personal responsibility, human growth, personal strive, and individual
dignity
○ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
■ Once basic needs are met, ppl. Tend to strive to meet higher needs
● Starts from psychological needs on bottom, then safety, social,
esteem, self-actualisation
● Can only reach higher stages once lower stages are met
● Learning approaches: behaviourism
○ Ppl. learn behaviour in and for specific situations
 ■ Behaviour followed by reward increases probability of behaviour
■ Behaviour associated w/ removal of punishment increases probability
■ Behaviour followed by punishment decreases probability
● Social learning theory by albert bandura
○ Emphasizes the importance of observational learning and modelling
○ Person can develop a behaviour from social environment
■ Ex. athletes can learn a behaviour by being exposed to it or observing the
behaviour from others
● Bandura believed athletes can develop an aggressive behaviour
through observation of the professional athletes
○ More likely to adopt behaviour if it results in positive outcomes
● genetic/biological factors
○ Around 50% of variance in personality traits are attributed to heritable factors
● Interactionist approach
○ Most preferred approach among personality psychologists
■ B = f(P,E)
● Behaviour is a function of both personality and environment
Measuring personality
● Trait and state measures
○ Ex. trait confidence vs. state confidence
■ Trait measure = measures generality of trait
■ State measure = measures trait in that specific moment
● Context specific tests predicting behaviour
○ More accurate than the regular tests
● Several sport and exercise measures for personality
○ Sport competitive anxiety test
○ Task and ego orientation in sport
○ Sport orientation questionnaire
○ Social physique anxiety
○ Sport multidimensional perfectionism scale

In general, there has been little to no hard evidence that personality is related to performance.
No specific sport personality.

Ethical considerations of measuring personality

● Administered by professionals
● Ensure confidentiality
● Inform athletes of testing, use of results, and who has access
● Shapes professional judgement and behaviour
Athletic motivation inventory (1969 by Tutko, Lyon, Ogilvie)
● Drive
● Determination
● Leadership
● Aggressiveness
 ● Self-confidence
● Emotional control
● Mental toughness
● Conscientiousness
○ Inventory had no support
Sport competitive Anxiety test (SCAT)
● Measures trait anxiety
● Good predictor of state anxiety in competition
● Poor predictor in performance
4 Personality constructs in Sports
● Risk taking
○ Trait defined as seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and
experiences
■ Willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for
experience
○ Sensation seeking = seeking varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and
experiences
■ Sensation seeking declines with age
○ Males more drawn to dangerous experiences
○ May be links to addictive behaviour
● Passion
○ Harmonious Passion (HP)
■ Engage as part of identity and for enjoyment
■ Positively related to positive emotions, ability to disengage, well-being,
effective decision making
○ Obsessive Passion (OP)
■ Rigid and uncontrollable urge to engage to avoid guilt
● Might participate to receive awards and fame
■ Related to stress, rumination, hostile aggression, cheating, inability to
stop when injured
● Perfectionism
○ Defined as multidimensional personality trait characterized by very high
performance standards combined w/ overly critical self-evaluation
○ Personal standards perfectionism (PSP)
■ High performance standards that are motivating and inspire you to
perform
■ Self-oriented achievement striving
■ Associated w/ adaptive functioning
○ Evaluative concerns perfectionism (ECP)
■ Set unrealistically high standards
■ Negative social evaluation
■ Excessive self-criticism
■ Concerns over mistakes
■ Doubts over actions
 ■ Associated w/ poor outcomes and maladjustment
○ 2X2 Model of perfectionism
■ Pure ECP = low psp, high ecp
■ Mixed perfectionism = high psp and ecp
■ Pure psp = high psp, low ecp
■ Non-perfectionism = low psp and ecp
○ Perfectionism itself may not be negative or maladaptive
■ Different types of perfectionism are associated w/ different outcomes
Meta analysis = synthesizing data of multiple studies to create a general conclusion
● Mental toughness
○ Personality characteristics that allow individuals to cope w/ stress and anxiety
while remaining focused on competition demands
○ The 4C model
■ Challenge to overcome situations
■ Control over experiences
■ Confidence to overcome experiences
■ Commitment to achieving goals
○ Research on mental toughness has been an emerging area
■ Few evidence that show mental toughness is a personality in sports
Influence of exercise on personality
● Exercise has little influence
● Exercise can change factors like physical self-perceptions, confidence in physical
activity, perceptions of well-being
● Rhodes and Smith (2006) study
○ Studied how major traits were correlated with physical activity
■ Extraversion and conscientiousness = small positive relation
■ Neuroticism = small negative relation
■ Can conclude personality has minor association w/ exercise
● Some evidence conscientiousness may affect successful translation of good exercise
intentions into behaviour
○ More-conscientious individuals have greater plans to exercise
Three P’s of athlete development
● Potential
● Performance
● Podium

Motivation
● Understanding behaviour helps us improve and sustain behaviour change
● Defined as internal or external forces that produce the initiation, intensity, and
persistence of behaviour
○ Initiation = situations that athletes seek out, approaches, or attracted to
○ Intensity = how much effort
○ Persistence = maintaining intensity over period of time
● Corresponds to the reasons why you do things
● Amotivation = lack of motivation
○ No link btw action and outcomes
● Extrinsic motivation = behaviours displayed for purpose of achieving some outcome
○ Aim to earn trophies, money, or to avoid guilt
● Intrinsic motivation = when someone engages activity for joy and love of sport
○ behaviours demonstrated voluntarily in absence of input of others
● Culture and social context influence motivation
● Participation motivation
○ High levels of drop out btw ages 10-13
○ Only 7% of canadian youth active enough for optimal growth and development
○ Adults and children often motivated to participate for similar reasons:
■ competence/skill development
■ fun/excitement/challenge
■ Affiliation
■ Fitness
○ How to describe participation motivation (several approaches)
■ The Trait approach
● Motivation is primarily a function of person’s characteristics
■ The Situation centered approach
● Motivation is primarily determined by situational factors
● Ex. coach’s behaviour, win-loss record
■ The interactionist approach
● Motivation arises from interaction of personal and situational
factors
● Motivation theories
○ All share competence and feedback
○ Emphasizes different things like internal drives, personal factors, role of enviro.
○ Achievement Goal Theory
■ People motivated to demonstrate competence
■ Motivation influenced by personal meaning one assigns to perceive
success and failure
● Perceptions of ability
● Motivational climate
● Dispositional goal orientations
■ Comparing themselves and skills to other athletes or to where they were
Before
■ Concept of ability
● Undifferentiated concept
○ Inability or choice not to differentiate btw ability and effort
○ Working hard is equated w/ ability
● Differentiated concept
○ Person able to and choose to differentiate btw ability and
effort
● Children unable to differentiate btw ability and effort
 ○ Able to by 12-13 years old
■ May lead to increase in drop out in sports
■ Task-goal orientation (mastery) = set self-referenced goals based on
learning and task mastery
● Several outcomes
○ Choose learning opportunities at risk of displaying
mistakes
○ Put forth high levels of effort
○ Persist in face of failure
○ Continue to problem solve when encountering failure
● Highly task-oriented people can still feel successful even when
they lose and less likely to drop in motivation
■ Ego goal orientation (outcome) = set norm-referenced goals focused on
outperforming others or performing equally w/ less effort
● Outcomes
○ Avoid learning opportunities that have risk or display error
○ Put just enough effort to compare to others or disguise
poor ability
○ Give up
○ Quality of problem solving during failure maintained or
deteriorates over time
● Aggressive tendencies
■ Motivational climates
● Perceived
○ Athlete’s perception of achievement goals promoted by
coaches and significant others
● Mastery-based
○ Emphasis on mastery learning, effort, individual
improvement, and cooperation tend to evoke a task
involvement
● Performance-based
○ Environments that stress interpersonal competition,
winning, and social comparison tend to evoke ego
involvement
● Epstein’s TARGET structures
○ Tasks, Authority, Recognition, Grouping, Evaluation, Time
○ Involves strategies intended to foster task engagement and
reduce social comparison
● Treasure’s 1993 study
○ Concluded coaches can affect achievement context to
such extent, so as to override dispositional goal
orientations of students
○ Motivational climate most important predictor of cognition
and affect
 ○ Mastery condition = preference to engage in challenging
tasks, success result of of motivation and effort, greater
satisfaction w/ activity
○ Ego performance condition = deception a key to success
○ Theory of Planned Behaviour
■ Originated from Theory of reasoned action (Azjen, 1985)
● Attitudes and subjective norms -> Intention -> behaviour
○ Attitudes = positive and negative evaluation of engaging in
particular behaviour
○ Subjective norms = reflect perceived social pressures that
form given behaviour
■ Full components
● Behavioural beliefs -> attitude
○ Behavioural = belief about consequences of particular
behaviour
● Normative beliefs -> subjective norms
○ Normative = reflect people’s belief in what they think others
are thinking or doing
● Control beliefs -> perceived behavioural control
○ Control = reflects perceived barriers and facilitators that
people believe are in their way or helping them engage in
certain behaviour
● Attitudes, subjective norms, and PBC -> Intention -> behaviour
● PBC -> behaviour
■ Limitations
● Suggests that intentions are primary predictors of behaviours
(intent-behaviour gap)
■ Research using TPB
● Correlational evidence
● Problems bridging intention-behaviour gap
● Experimental evidence is weak
○ Transtheoretical model
■ Progress through 5 stages of change
● Precontemplation
○ Does not exercise in next 6 months
○ May be demoralized about ability to change, defensive
about social pressures, uniformed abt health
consequences of current behaviour
● Contemplation
○ Not exercising, contemplating exercising in next 6 months
● Preparation
○ Exercising, but not regularly
○ Activity not frequent enough to confer major benefits
○ Have plan of action
 ● action
○ Has been exercising regularly
● maintenance
○ Exercising regularly for more than 6 months
■ How people move from one stage to next
● Self-efficacy
○ Very low in beginning, increases overtime
● Decisional balance
○ Thinking of advantages vs. disadvantages
● Processes of change
○ Strategies used to progress through changes
■ Integrative model of behavioural change
■ Change implies phenomena occurring overtime
■ Model describes how people modify a problem behaviour or acquire a
positive behaviour
■ Involves emotions, cognitions, behaviours
■ Previously applied to smoking cessation, exercise, alcohol abuse, etc.
■ Matching intervention to stage of change is effective in producing high
levels of regular exercise
■ Experiential processes
● Used for early stages
● Increasing awareness, emotional arousal, social reappraisal,
environmental opportunities, self reappraisal
■ Behavioural processes
● Used for later stages
● Re-engineering, supporting, substituting, rewarding, committing
■ Preventing relapses
● Expect and plan for relapses
● Develop coping strategies to deal w/ high risk situations
(relaxation training)
○ Self-Determination Theory
■ Social factors -> relatedness, competence, autonomy -> motivation ->
motivation consequences (affective, behavioural, cognitive)
● Autonomy = need to perceive that one has choice and are in
control of their own behaviour
○ Facilitate IM by conditions like absence of pressure, goal
choice, task involvement, strategy choice
○ Undermine IM by pressure towards specific outcome,
punishment contingencies, deadlines, controlling rewards,
goal imposition, surveillance, ego-involvement
● Competence = need to feel effective at achieving desired
outcomes
○ Facilitate IM by optimal challenge, positive feedback,
informational rewards
 ○ Undermine IM by non-optimal challenges, negative
feedback
● Relatedness = need to authentically connect w/ others and feel
involved in social context
○ Facilitate IM by empathy, warmth, security of attachment
○ Undermine IM by “cold interactions”, lack of positive
involvement
● All 3 are universal
■ Levels of influence
● Situational, contextual, global (bottom to top)
○ Contextual acts as middle ground
○ Contextual can influence either situational or global
■ Can also be vice versa
○ Global = how you feel in life in general
■ Ex. “High school is good” (school life is general)
○ Situational = how you feel right now or in that situation
■ 5 mini theories
● Organismic integration theory
○ Concerned w/ extent to which different types of behaviour
are motivated intrinsically or extrinsically
● Basic psychological needs theory
○ Concerned w/ basic, fundamental, and universal
psychological needs that related to high quality motivation
● Cognitive evaluation theory
○ Concerned w/ different factors from the environment that
can undermine intrinsic motivation
● Goal contents theory
○ Concerned w/ what people pursue in their daily lives
● Causality orientations theory
○ Extent to which individual differences or personality level
factors contribute to the extent people seek out
autonomous vs. controlled intrinsic motivation
■ Self-determined motivation can cause positive well-being, vitality,
enjoyment, self-esteem, persistence
■ Non self-determined motivation can cause anxiety, ill-being, burn-out,
boredom, drop-out
■ Success enhances intrinsic motivation while failure diminishes it
■ Competition can influence intrinsic or self-determined motivation
● Study by Vallerand and colleagues in 1986
○ Concluded that children in competitive conditions spent
less time on task during free choice period than those in
controlled conditions
 ■ Doesn’t mean competition undermines motivation,
it just suggests that winning is overemphasized in
certain occasions
■ Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards
● Thought that rewards can either increase or have no effect on
motivation
● Studies have suggested undermining effect, but no consistent
results yet
■ Rewards
● Include social and tangible rewards
● Small rewards = less controlling
● Controlling rewards = related to need for autonomy or
self-determination
○ If perceived this way, can undermine motivation
■ Ex. “if you don’t succeed, we can take away your
scholarship”
● Informational rewards = related to need for competence
○ Can bolster intrinsic motivation; recognition of competence
● Suggested to Phase out rewards as IM develops
● Organize rewards to provide competence info achievable by all
participants
■ Cooperation
● Positive influence on intrinsic motivation
● Influences need for relatedness
■ Coaching
● Autonomy supportive
○ Involve athletes in decision making, gives them choices in
how they want to pursue their goals
○ Can bolster intrinsic motivation
● Controlling
○ Withdraw autonomy and choice, athletes have no say
○ Can undermine intrinsic motivation
■ Motivational continuum (from left to right)
● Amotivation
○ Lack of intent to act at all or passive engagement in
activities
● External regulation
○ Behaviours controlled by constraints or rewards
○ Performing activity to receive award or avoid punishment
● Introjected regulation
○ Internalization in which person takes in value, but does not
accept it as their own
○ Internal pressures to act to avoid guilt/shame
 ○ External sources are internalized and behaviours
reinforced by internal pressures
■ Ex. working out to keep attractive physique w/ goal
of impressing others
● Identified regulation
○ Behaviour is valued, deemed important, and done out of
choice but still for extrinsic reasons
○ “I want to…
■ Ex. exercising for most people (appearance,
fitness/health, weight)
● Integrated regulation
○ Activity is personally important and directed towards
valued outcome
○ Becomes part of one’s sense of self
■ Ex. “I am a soccer player and playing hard and
eating healthy is what a good soccer player does”
● Intrinsic motivation
○ People motivated by tasks that demonstrate competency,
that they have control of, and are fun, challenging, and
provide excitement
○ Social Cognitive Theory
■ Triadic Reciprocal Causation
● Behaviour ⇆ personal factors ⇆ environment
■ Theory has produced some of most consistent results in predicting
exercise and behaviour
■ Exercise and sport behaviour influenced by personal and environmental
factors, particularly self-efficacy
■ Key constructs
● 1. Observational learning
○ People learn and acquire certain behaviour by observing
others
● 2. Goals
○ Targets/goals people pursue
● 3. Outcome expectations
○ Outcomes expected by ourselves to achieve based on
specific actions
○ Physical, social, self-evaluative
● 4. Self-Regulation
○ When people take charge of their own actions
● 5. Behavioural Capacity
○ Human achievement is dependent on person’s knowledge
and skills
● 6. Self-efficacy (self-confidence)
 ○ One’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviours
necessary to produce specific performance attainments
○ Situation specific self-confidence
■ Motivated behaviour influenced by:
● Self-efficacy beliefs
● Outcome expectations
○ Both positive and negative
■ Self-efficacy can affect outcomes expectations, goals, socio structural
factors, and behaviour
■ Self-efficacy and outcome expectations are both motivators
● Self-efficacy refers to the belief to perform an action
● Outcome expectations refers to the belief the actions can achieve
the outcomes intended
■ Underlying assumptions
● Behaviour can be goal directed and guided by forethought
● People are self-reflective and capable of self-regulation
● People can learn through observation
■ Self-efficacy beliefs theorised to be important mechanism in mediating
behaviour and change
■ Self-efficacy theory determinants + methods of instilling self-efficacy
● Performance experiences
○ Clear success/failure experiences are most powerful
sources of self-efficacy information
○ Method = performance exposure
● Vicarious experiences
○ Observation of abilities of others similar to the person,
noting consequences of their behaviour, and using
information to make assessment about one’s own
perception of ability
○ Method = live modelling
● Imaginal experiences
○ People can generate beliefs about personal efficacy or
inefficacy in future situations
○ Method = mental imagery
● Verbal persuasion
○ Self-efficacy can be changed moderately by verbal
persuasion; dependant upon expertise, trustworthiness,
and attractiveness of the source
○ Method = suggestion, mentoring
● Physiological states
○ Aversive physiological states can reduce self-efficacy,
whereas pleasant states can increase it
○ One’s perception of one’s physiological state
○ Method = relaxation, biofeedback
 ● Emotional state
○ People more likely to have increase self-efficacy when
their emotions are positive instead of negative
○ Method = music, attribution training
■ Self-efficacy theory outcomes
● Cognition
○ Goals attribution
● Affect
○ Reduce anxiety and improve satisfaction
● Behaviour
○ Better Choice, effort, persistence
■ Self-efficacy beliefs vary along 3 dimensions
● Magnitude
○ # of levels of increasing difficulty that person believes they
can perform
■ E..g can be confident in lifting 50 lbs, but not 100
lbs
● Strength
○ Firmness of one’s convictions that they can perform
behaviour in a certain context
■ E.g. 100% confident or 50% confident
● Generality
○ Generalizability of self-efficacy expectancies for specific
behaviour to other behaviours w/in similar contexts
■ E.g. person confident in playing tennis also has
confident in playing squash
■ E.g. person confident in playing tennis may not
have confidence in skiing
■ Self-doubt can hinder even most gifted athletes
■ After “barrier” is broken, its rapidly surpassed by others
● E.g. once a long jump record is broken, the record continues to be
broken by others
■ Self-efficacy in domains:
● Exercise
○ Specific forms of self-efficacy predict exercise intention
and behaviour
■ E.g. barrier, scheduling, exercise
● Health
○ Predicts patient compliance and adaptation
■ E.g. task, self-regulatory
● Guidelines
○ 1. Use interactional model of motivation
○ 2. Emphasize perceptions of competence and self-control
○ 3. Develop confidence through challenging tasks and positive feedback
 ○ 4. Develop mastery motivational climates
○ 5. Ensure rewards are informational
○ 6. Meet autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs

Stress, Emotion, and Coping in Sport and Exercise:

● The Stress process (complex)
○ 1. Appraisal of demands
○ 2. Coping responses
○ 3. Stress response
● Arousal, stress, and anxiety have been referred to in literature synonymously
○ However, terms are conceptually distinct
● Stress = a relationship btw the person and environment that is perceived as taxing or
exceeding resources of person and endangers their well-being
○ Responses to stressor
■ physiological
● increased/decreased breathing rate, body temp, skin conductance
■ cognitive
● Constant worrying, racing thoughts, forgetfulness
■ Emotional
● Characterized by release of hormones like cortisol or adrenaline
throughout the body
● Positive emotions associated w/ activity in left prefrontal cortical
areas of brain
● Negative emotions associated w/ right prefrontal cortical areas
■ behavioural reactions
○ Acute stress = occurs over a short period of time
○ Chronic stress = occurs over long period of time
● Stressors = demand made on individual which is appraised by person as taxing or
exceeding their resources
○ Expected stressors = we can anticipate and prepare for
○ Unexpected stressors = not anticipated and we cannot plan for them
■ Generally perceived as more stressful than expected
○ Competitive stressor = experiences prior to, during, or after competition
○ Non-competitive stressor = sport-related but not directly part of competition
■ Some can be defined as different types of organizational stressors
■ Can be important in shaping athlete’s experiences in sport
■ 5 categories of organizational stressors
● Factors intrinsic to sports (training and competition load)
● Roles in sport organization (being team captain)
● Sport relationships and interpersonal demands (poor leadership)
● Athletic career and performance devlp issues (meeting goals)
● Organizational structure and climate of sport (coaching style)
● Sources of stress in sports
○ Psychological concerns
 ■ E.g. concerned about your skills and whether you can execute or not
■ Factors = perfectionism, lack of self-efficacy, how success if defined,
participation motivation
○ Physical concerns
■ Factors = injuries, illness, pain
○ Social concerns
■ Factors = looking to impress others, fear of being outperformed by others,
culture
○ Environmental concerns
■ Factors = Finance, weather,
○ Career and life concerns
■ Factors = retirement, transition from amateur league to the big league,
family events
● Model of stress
○ Cognitive-Motivational-Relational Theory of stress (Lazarus, 1991)

● Cognitive appraisal = evaluation about whether encounter has significance for person’s
well-being
○ Appraisal, not particular environment stimuli, that produces emotion
● Types of appraisal
○ Primary appraisal
■ Evaluation of What is at stake
■ Encounter is relevant to one’s values, goals, beliefs, and self
■ Goal importance, goal congruence, ego involvement
○ Secondary appraisal
■ Evaluation of What can be done
■ Individual’s ability to manage, prevent, or adapt to encounter
 ■ Expectancies, agency (can I do something about it), available resources
○ Harm/loss appraisal = refers to evaluation of situation where psychological
damage has already been done and loss is irrevocable
■ E.g. college athlete not being able to participate due to them using up
their 5 year eligibility; loses athlete identity and struggles to find a new
one
○ Threat appraisal = refers to anticipation of harm that might occur
■ E.g. weightlifter who is fearful of maximum weight testing as it can hurt
them
○ Challenge appraisal = interpretation that if there are obstacles, they can
overcome it
■ Likely to occur if person has high self-efficacy, perceived control, and an
approach achievement goal orientation
● Emotion = complex psychophysiological state of limited duration that’s associated w/ a
distinctive subjective feeling and distinctive facial or body expression
○ Has cognitive and physical component
○ Emotions are response to stressor
■ Quick onset, short duration, common cognitive appraisal, distinctive
physiological patterns, distinctive subjective feeling
○ The way in which person appraises situation will influence emotions they
experience
○ Emotion regulation = the processes by which person influence which emotions
they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them
■ Strategies can be developed to influence specific stages of emotion
regulation
● 1. Situation selection
○ Take actions to be in a situation that promotes desired
emotion
● 2. Situation modification
○ Tries to influence situation directly
○ E.g. changing of equipment
● 3. Attentional deployment
○ Directs attention towards or away from situation
● 4. Cognitive change
○ Changing the emotional significance of event by changing
how one thinks about event
● 5. Response modulation
○ Individual’s physiological, experiential, or behavioural
responses to try to regulate emotions
○ E.g. hiding or suppressing emotions
■ Interpersonal emotion regulation strategies
● When ppl try to positively/negatively affect emotions of teammates
○ Affect-improving and Affect-worsening
● Moods = diffuse, global, subjective feeling states
 ○ Tend to last longer than emotions
○ Not directed toward particular person or thing/event
○ E.g. cheerful, glum
● Coping = an ongoing dynamic process which includes conscious and deliberate
cognitive, behavioural, and affective efforts undertaken in order to manage appraised
demands (stressors)
○ Coping strategies:
■ Micro
● Problem-focused
○ Try to change situation; try to solve the problem
○ Tends to be more effective than others
● Emotion-focused coping
○ Try to change emotion response w/o changing the
transaction
● Avoidance coping
○ Avoids task or challenge
■ Macro
● Task-oriented coping
○ Aims at dealing directly w/ source of stress and its resulting
thoughts and emotions
○ Captures both problem focused and active forms of
emotion focused coping strategies known to facilitate task
management
○ E.g. using mental imagery or logical analysis
● Disengagement coping
○ Strategies to disengage themselves from process to
achieve goal
○ E.g. swearing, letting themselves feel hopeless, hoping
stressor ends immediately
● Distraction-oriented coping
○ Still engage, but try to distract yourself from the situation
○ E.g. thinking about leisure or friends
■ Adaptive coping = typically associated w/ problem-focus, approach type
strategies
■ Maladaptive coping = typically associated w/ avoidance or
disengagement type coping strategies
■ Good news coping = attempts that are organized, flexible, constructive
■ Bad news coping = attempts are rigid, disorganized, destructive
○ Coping process and coping outcome are not the same
○ Coping outcome = results of coping efforts
○ Coping effectiveness
■ Perceived coping effectiveness = how people believe a particular coping
strategy has been effective at reducing stress
■ Goodness-of-fit model of coping
 ● 1. Fit between reality and appraisal
○ Reflects what is actually going on in situation and how that
situation is appraised by someone
○ Can be done through verbal persuasion
● 2. Fit between appraisal and coping
○ Reflects match btw one’s perceived controllability of
situation and actual control
○ No coping strategy is universally effective or ineffective
○ Multiple coping strategies used at once to deal w/ stress
○ When a coping behaviour becomes a routine for the person, it's considered as a
management skill rather than a coping strategy
■ Efforts to manage stress constantly changes
○ Factors influencing coping
■ Gender
● No significance evidence that concludes difference in coping
strategies btw men and women
■ Culture
● E.g. Korean athletes uses prayer as coping strategy while others
may not
■ Individual factors
● Age, development, expertise
○ More proficient athletes used task-oriented coping
● Personality
○ Optimism and self-confidence associated w/
problem-focused coping and task-oriented coping
○ Perfectionism associated w/ lower levels of well-being and
used disengagement-oriented coping
■ However, self-oriented, perfectionistic athletes tend
to use task-oriented coping as they don’t feel
pressured by others when pursuing goals
■ Social environmental factors
● Teammates emotions can influence emotions of other teammates
● Coach’s pre-game or intermission speeches can also influence
emotions of athletes
○ E.g. unsupportive coaches resulted in athletes using
disengagement-oriented coping
● Strategies for stress reduction
○ If-then coping plans
○ Emotion regulation
○ Self-compassion
■ Desire to be moved by one’s own suffering and desire to alleviate
suffering
■ Involves 3 components
● Self kindness, common humanity, mindfulness
 ○ Expressive writing
■ Writing about stressful situations in past
● They learn from their emotional experiences
Anxiety in sport and exercise:
● Arousal = a general state of activation from deep sleep to extreme excitement
○ Intensity dimension
○ Neither positive or negative
○ Includes physiological, cognitive, and behavioural components
● Anxiety = negative emotional state characterized by nervousness, worry and
apprehension and increased physiological activation
○ Specific emotion produced through appraisal/interpretation of situation/event
○ Somatic anxiety
■ Perceptions of body states (racing heart, butterflies)
■ Perceived unpleasant physiological response to threatening situation
○ Cognitive anxiety
■ Distressing thoughts, images, disruption of cognitive processing system
○ Physiological characteristics
■ Increase of heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, etc.
○ Cognitive characteristics
■ Decrease in concentration, complex decision-making
○ Behavioural characteristics
■ Nail biting, foot tapping, pacing, trembling, etc.
● Dimensions of anxiety
○ Intensity of anxiety symptoms
○ Frequency of cognitive intrusions
○ Directional interpretation of symptoms
● Trait and state components of anxiety
○ Trait anxiety = part of person’s personality
○ State anxiety = moment to moment experiences of anxiety w/in situation
○ High trait anxious people usually have more state anxiety in highly evaluative
situations
● Context specific anxiety
○ Social anxiety
■ Occurs during social situations; occurs when evaluations may happen
○ Competitive anxiety
■ Associated w/ sport or competition
● Concerns w/ body, performance, skills, injury
○ Social physique anxiety
■ Experiencing anxiety due to others’ evaluations of physique in social
settings
● Often occurs in exercise context
● Interaction approach
○ Individual differences in anxiety experienced are best understood in relationship
btw person and environment
 ○ Understand the sources of the anxiety to reduce it
● Situational sources of anxiety
○ Sport type
■ Individual athletes creates more anxiety on person than team sport
○ Situational importance
■ E.g. playoffs, critical moments
○ Role perceptions
■ Unclear team roles elicit higher cognitive and somatic anxiety levels
● Personal sources of anxiety
○ Personality
■ Higher personality traits of external locus of control and or neuroticism
can contribute to higher anxiety levels prior to competition
■ High self-esteem generally creates lower levels of competitive state
anxiety
■ Self-handicapping behaviours: exaggerating and complaining to obscure
poor performance
○ Goal orientation
■ Ego goal orientation causes anxiety in high importance situations
● Not being able to achieve external goals
■ Mastery orientation causes less anxiety
● Factor of having control
○ Beliefs and attitudes related to success
■ Positive beliefs related to lower levels of state anxiety
■ Beliefs relating to team success influence precompetitive anxiety
○ experience and expectancies
■ More experienced athletes tend to experience lower levels of
precompetition anxiety
■ High success expectancies associated w/ lower pre competition anxiety
○ Gender
■ Research inconsistent
■ Early work suggested females experienced higher state anxiety than men
○ Use of coping skills
■ behaviours/cognitions used to adjust physiological arousal and cognitive
anxiety
■ Behaviours include relaxation skills, self-talk, cognitive restructuring, and
imagery
● How anxiety affects performance?
○ Four theories
■ Drive theory
● As arousal increases, the performance of learned response
increases
● Increases for advanced athletes, decreases for beginners
● No data support
■ The inverted-U hypothesis
 ● Maximum performance for moderate arousal
● Performance decreases if emotional arousal is too low or too high
● Optimal arousal might be different across sports (e.g. golf and
weightlifting)
● No data support
■ Individualized zones of optimal functioning
● Athlete A = best performance w/ high state anxiety
● Athlete B = best performance w/ medium state anxiety
● Athlete C = best performance w/ low state anxiety
● Assumes every athlete has optimal zone of anxiety or arousal for
ideal performances
○ Anxiety not always detrimental to sport performance
■ Multidimensional theory of state anxiety
● Cognitive anxiety decreases performance
● Somatic anxiety has inverted-U relationship w/ performance
■ Catastrophe theory
● When cognitive state anxiety is low, relationship btw physiological
arousal and performance is an inverted-U shape
● When physiological arousal is low, elevations in cognitive state
anxiety are associated w/ enhanced performance
● When physiological arousal is high, elevations in cognitive state
anxiety are associated w/ performance declines
● When cognitive state anxiety is high, increases in physiological
anxiety can be positive for performance up until a point
(catastrophe point)
○ Once pass point, performance significantly decreases
● E.g. choking in sports
○ Acute significant decrements in performances that occur in
situations of high pressure or anxiety
■ Incorporates cognitive state anxiety and
physiological arousal as they affect performance
■ Recognizes that relationship btw anxiety and
athletic performance is complex
● Why does anxiety influence performance?
○ attention/concentration changes
■ Pre-occupation w/ worries or somatic symptoms = “inappropriate task
focus” (cognitive interference)
○ Attentional narrowing
■ High cognitive anxiety can lead to inappropriate focus and athletes may
miss task-relevant cues
■ High levels of physiological arousal may lead to narrow attention
○ Shifts to conscious processing
■ Competitive anxiety sometimes causes shifts to conscious processing
■ Paralysis by analysis
 ○ Muscle tension and coordination difficulties
■ Involuntary co-concentration of muscle groups can be devastating in
fine/complex motor skills (e.g. “yips” in golf putting or free throws)
● Sometimes, precompetitive anxiety can trigger preparation behaviours
○ Race planning, equipment checks
Anxiety and Arousal Regulation:
Self awareness of arousal
● Awareness of psychological states = before you can control your thoughts/feelings
● Once aware of optimal arousal, you can employ arousal regulation strategies
Stress management techniques
● Physiological techniques (somatic)
○ Progressive relaxation
■ Purpose = develops self-awareness of tension and relaxation; create
relaxation in relevant muscles
■ Series of exercises involving contracting specific muscle group for several
seconds, then relaxing
■ Progress = from extremities to inner core; from head to toe
■ Full program practice = 30 minutes
○ Deep Breathing
■ Easy, one of most effective
■ Breathing out decreases tension, but tendency in stressful situation to
hold breath or increase breathing rate
■ Deep, diaphragm breathing at slow and controlled place
● Complete breaths; rhythmic beats; concentrated breathing
■ Three ways of breathing
● Startled/emergency
● Thoracic
● Diaphragmatic
○ Can control the way we breathe or let it run on automatic;
gives us doorway to autonomic nervous system
○ Inhalation = sympathetic activity (arousal)
○ Exhalation = parasympathetic activity (relaxation)
● Massages internal organs and decrease workload on heart and
lungs
○ Biofeedback
■ Becoming more aware of your autonomic nervous system
■ Learning to control your physiological and autonomic response
● Cognitive techniques
○ Meditation
■ Goal = create state of heightened awareness, effortlessness, relaxation,
spontaneity, and focus
■ 4 elements
● Quiet, limit distractions
● Comfortable position
 ● Mental device/mantra
● Passive attitude
○ Self-talking
○ Imagery
○ Goal setting strategies
Mindfulness
● State of active, open attention on present
● When mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance w/o judging them
as good or bad
● Means living in the moment and awakening to experience
Matching Hypothesis
● Technique should match particular anxiety/arousal problem
○ Cognitive or somatic
● cognitive/somatic intervention strategies have some effect on both cognitive and somatic
anxiety
Arousal increasing techniques
● Increase breathing rate, act energized, self-talk, energizing music, energizing imagery,
precompetitive workout, team strategies
Psychological Skills Training:
Focus and scope of educational sport psychology
● Purpose = to educate and develop skills
● Psychology skills training (PST)
○ Systematic and consistent practice of mental or psychological skills for purpose
of enhancing performance, or increasing enjoyment
○ Integrates many psychological skills and methods
○ Individualized
○ Requires training over time
○ Steps of PST program
■ Education
● Convey importance of pst and how it affects performance
■ Assessment
● Determines what athletes need and what skills will address needs
● Performance profile technique
○ Qualities arranged outside of dart board
○ Scale of 1-10 is placed for each quality
○ Allows to identify specific components that need work
■ Acquisition
● Strategies and techniques for learning skills
● Prioritize only few skills at a time
● Teach skills based on needs
● Practice skills in environment that optimizes basic skill learning
■ Practice
● over-learn/automate skills
 ○ Use in practice situations frequently so that new skills
become automatic response
● Integrate skills into performance
○ Once skills mastered, used in competitive situations
○ Caution against trying new skills initially in performance
environments
● Simulate situations where skills will be used
○ In practices, competitions, etc.
■ Evaluation
● Ongoing throughout program
● Determine effectiveness of training and how much athletes are
practicing and using skills, and quality of delivery
● Includes written evaluations, discussions, etc.
■ Self regulation
● Athletes should be able to regulate and self-monitor own
emotional state
● Athletes should be able to function independently w/o constant
direction from trainer/coach
○ Common problems of implementing PST
■ Lack of conviction
● Not wanting to do something; not convinced this will help
■ Lack of time
■ Lack of sport knowledge
● Problem of PST consultants working in sports where they are not
knowledgeable
■ Lack of follow up
● Do not expect results from only doing first few stages of PST
program
○ Ethical issues in PST
■ Competence, integrity, social responsibility, etc.
● Characteristics of effective consultants
○ Accessible, good listener, flexible, likeable, knowledgeable, etc.
Goal Setting
● Practice of establishing desirable objectives for one’s actions
○ One of most powerful and effective skills
● Success of setting goals
○ Directs attention to important elements
○ Mobilizes efforts
○ Adds persistence
○ Develops new learning and performance strategies
● Types of goals
○ Outcome
■ Focus on social comparison and competitive results
● E.g. winning race
 ■ Can facilitate short term motivation, but can cause anxiety
○ Performance
■ Focus on improving and attaining personal performance standards
● E.g. learning an out-turn draw in curling
● Giving 100% effort at all times in exercise session
■ More precise, can be self-set, and self-compared
■ But can increase anxiety
○ Process
■ Focus on specific behaviours
● E.g. pulling arms in tight in a spin
■ Can help you reach performance and outcome goals
■ But can cause athletes to be too consciously involved in actions
● Goal setting theory
○ 2 fundamental premises
■ Difficult goals lead to considerable higher levels of performance than easy
goals
■ Specific goals lead to higher levels of performance than vague goals
○ Attributes of effective goals
■ Specificity
■ Temporality
■ Moderate difficulty/challenging
■ Collectivity
● All lead to goal effectiveness
○ Moderation
■ Increasing workload spike can affect risk of injury
● Fit people will not get injured as much as non-fit people if workload
spike is increased
■ Moderators = commitment, ability, feedback, task complexity
● Level of goal effectiveness by the attributes depends on the
moderators
○ Guides behaviour
■ Directs actions related to goal
■ Regulates effort required
■ Increases persistence
● How to assess goals: performance profiling
○ Identify key performance characteristics
■ Physiological, technical, psychological
○ Prioritize your targets
● SMARTS goals
○ Specific
○ Measurable
○ Action oriented
○ Realistic
○ Time based
 ○ Self-determined
● Evidence of setting good goals
○ Arguments
○ anyone can use goal setting = true
■ Goal setting works across any population
○ only I should set my goals = false
○ make goals difficult = Mostly true
■ Too difficult = drop off in behaviour
■ Consider initial activity levels
■ Aim for small increases overtime
○ goals should be specific = depends
■ Beginners = not necessarily
■ Advanced = probably
Mental Imagery:
● Visualization, mental rehearsal, symbolic rehearsal, covert practice, mental practice
● Types of mental practice
○ Imagery rehearsal
■ See, feel, smell, taste, hear,
○ Verbal rehearsal
■ Self-talk, performance cues
● Imagery:
○ “Using all senses to recreate or create experiences in mind” (vealey and walter,
1993)
■ Re-creation or creation of experience
■ Occurs in absence of external stimuli (don’t have to be there to imagine)
■ Individuals are aware and have control of these experiences
○ Functions:
■ Setting goals
■ Learning to control emotions
■ Developing self-awareness
■ Improving concentration
■ Relieving pain
■ Practicing sport skills
■ Practicing strategies
● Perspectives
○ Internal = from your own vantage point
○ External = from perspective of outside observer
● Imagery Ability
○ Vividness = crystal clear; ‘in focus’
○ Controllability = imagine yourself having control over something
● Imagery theories
○ Psychoneuromuscular theory (carpenter, 1894)
■ Muscle memory
 ■ Imagining movements produces muscle innervations similar to actual
movements
● Strengthens neural pathways
○ Symbolic learning theory (Sackett, 1934)
■ Imagery provides blueprint to help people acquire and understand
movement patterns
○ Bio-informal theory (Lang, 1979)
■ Imagery composed of stimulus (describes imagined scenario) and
response
○ Triple code model (Ahsen, 1984)
■ Image (sensation), somatic response (psychophysical changes), meaning
○ Cumming and Williams (2012)

○ Imagery ability acts a moderator

● Imagery effectiveness and imagery functions
● Imagery functions:
○ Cognitive specific (images of specific sport skills)
○ Cognitive general (Images of strategies, game plans, or routines)
○ Motivational specific (images of related to individual’s goals)
○ Motivational general-arousal (encompasses arousal and stress)
■ Goal directed, can be used to motivate you before game
○ Motivational general-mastery
■ Feeling confident, in control, being mentally tough, effective coping
● Facts about imagery
○ Helps performance for both novice and experienced performers
○ More effective when individuals are better in their ability to image
○ Should be used in addition to physical practice
● Keys to effective imagery
○ Engage in vividness training
■ Includes exercises designed to strengthen the senses identified as
important for sport performance
○ Controllability training
■ Learning how to manipulate images at will
○ PETTLEP Model (holmes and collins, 2001)

● Tennis example for PETTLEP model

 ● Stages of intervention
○ Education, skill acquisition, skill practice
● Creating an imagery program
○ Phase I = awareness, realistic, expectations, and basic education
○ Phase II = imagery skill evaluation and development
■ Sensory awareness, vividness, controllability, self-awareness
○ Phase III = using imagery
○ Phase IV = imagery evaluation, adjustment, and refinement
● When to use imagery
○ Before and after practice
○ Before and after competition
○ Personal time
○ During breaks in action
○ When recovering from imagery
Attention:
● Attention = the concentration of sensory of mental efforts
● Components of concentration
○ Focusing on relevant environmental cues
■ Selective attention: focus on task relevant vs. task-irrelevant cues
○ Maintaining attentional focus over time
■ Consider nature of sports (e.g. marathon running - associative vs.
dissociative strategies)
○ Situational awareness
■ Ability to understand what is going on around oneself (size up the
situation)
● Selective attention and performance
○ Errors of selection
 ■ Too broad: fail to focus on relevant cues
■ Wrong direction: focus on irrelevant information
■ Too narrow: focus on too few cues
● Four types of attentional focus (nideffer, 1976)

● Golf Example (order is not set; can go any order)

● Attentional problems
○ Internal distractions
■ Past events (what was?)
 ■ Future events (what if?)
■ Over-analysis of body mechanics (what you’re doing vs. where you’re
going)
■ Fatigue
○ External distractions
■ Visual distractions (friends, crowd)
■ Auditory distractions (crowd cheers or insults)
■ Gamesmanship (“nice technique”)
● Assessing attentional skills
○ Self-report measures
○ Test of attention and interpersonal style (nideffer, 1976)
■ Effective attenders attend several stimuli w/o getting overloaded and can
narrow attention w/o leaving out important info
■ Ineffective attenders are easily confused w/ multiple stimuli
■ TAIS = trait measure and does not consider situational factors
○ Psychophysiological measures
■ EEG (brain activity)
● Alpha activity in left cerebral hemisphere associated w/ relaxed
wakefulness
● E.g. elite shooters can voluntarily control cognitive activity in left
cerebral hemisphere
■ fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
● Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex = area of brain that does the
controlling of controlled attentional processes
● Limited in sport and exercise psychology
○ Due to inaccessibility of an MRI machine
○ Behavioural measures
■ Dual task methods (kanowitz and knight, 1976)
● Tapping btw 2 points, in time w/ a metronome, w/ a secondary task
of adding column of numbers
■ Reaction time to peripheral stimuli (jones et. al, 1988)
● Found increase in somatic anxiety and low self confidence can
lead to increase in errors in a reaction time task prior to match
● Differences between novices and experts
○ Experts pick up cues earlier than novices
○ Info available prior to things (ball flight in fast ball sports) used more by experts
○ More effective cues used by experts
○ Myth of experts of being able to “watch the ball hit the racquet”
● Tips for improving concentration
○ Use simulations in practices
○ Use cue words to focus
○ Establish routines
○ Focus in present
○ Overlearn skills
 ○ Passive awareness
○ Control the controllables
○ Learn to shift attention
○ “Park thoughts”
○ Search for relevant cues
○ Rehearse game concentration
Self-Talk:
● Self-talk = verbalizations or statements addressed to self, are multidimensional and
dynamic; have interpretive elements associated w/ them
○ Serve as motivational and/or interpretive functions
○ Natural process
■ Can be distracting (e.g. thinking about what media will say if you miss
shot)
○ Can be systematically practiced and used to:
■ Correct bad habits
■ Focus attention
■ Modify activation
■ Build self-confidence
■ Maintain exercise behaviour
● Responses to self-talk
○ Positive = motivation and effort increases
○ Instructional = individual can become focused and motivated
○ Negative = become hopeless, frustrated, distracted
● Type of self-talk used will influence outcomes (future thoughts, emotions, motivation,
performance, etc.)
● Common types of negative self-talk
○ Perfection is essential
○ Personalization
○ Catastrophizing
○ Blaming
○ Worth depends on achievement
○ One-trial generalization
○ Fallacy of fairness
○ Polarized thinking
● Self-talk dimensions (hardy, 2006)
● Guidelines for self-talk use
○ Short, specific phrases
■ Easy to remember, fit into routines
■ Less interference with automatic processing
○ First person
■ Enhances personal meaning
○ Present tense
■ Keeps focus on process, orients athletes to action
○ Use specific task instructions rather than general instructions
■ E.g. keep your shoulder back vs. keep good technique
○ Consider using metaphorical language
■ E.g. float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
● Self-talk awareness
○ Most of us are not really aware of type of self-talk we use, or its content
○ Need to raise awareness before we can modify self-talk and evaluate change
● Self-talk modification
○ Thought-stopping = use of verbal, visual, or physical cues to interrupt unwanted
thoughts
■ Notice yourself making negative self-statement
■ Say “stop” in your head or out loud, or use some other cue to help you
stop the thought
 ■ Follow up thought stopping by replacing thought w/ more positive
self-statement
○ Reframing = changing negative to positive
■ Changing negative into positive self-statement
■ Positive statement provides you with an alternate focus to replace
negative statement
■ Must be positive, but also believable
● Do not lie to yourself
○ Cognitive restructuring = used frequently in therapy
■ Aimed at helping individuals systematically identify and modify
stress-inducing statements
● Identify how you feel and what you think in a situation
● Examine evidence that supports and refutes negative thoughts
● Decide on most fair evaluation and course of action given the
evidence
○ Affirmations = positive self-statements
■ Positive statements made to increase confidence and motivation
■ Choose key, personally meaningful phrases or words
■ Many performers write them somewhere prominent where they will see
them to remind them
Leadership:
What is leadership?
● An intangible quality w/ no definition
● Leadership is pivotal
● Consistently predicts employee, student, athlete:
○ Attitudes, motivation, performance, well-being
Ideal behaviours of youth sport coaches
● Phase 1 = development of mediational model of leadership and coaching behaviour
assessment system
● Phase 2 = implementation of intervention program
○ Coaching effectiveness training (CET)
● 12 behaviours typical of coaches in athletic situations
● spontaneous and reactive dimensions
● Useful in informing us how teachers/coaches actually behave and the implications
resulting from these behaviours
Multidimensional model of leadership (MML)
● Linear model comprising antecedents, leader behaviours, and consequences
● Conceptualizes leadership as an interactional process
○ Evaluate leadership effectiveness through
■ Team member satisfaction
■ Athlete performance
● Required leader behaviours = expected coach behaviours
● Preferred leader behaviours = generally based on athlete’s preferences
● Actual leader behaviours = behaviours coach exhibits, regardless of team standards
 ● 5 dimensions of leadership
○ Training instructions
○ Autocratic behaviours
○ democratic behaviours
○ Positive feedback
○ Social support
● Findings
○ Congruency hypothesis
■ Actual behaviour will translate to more member satisfaction and group
performance
■ Whether Required and preferred behaviour is aligned with actual
behaviour
○ Athletes are satisfied w/ leadership to the extent that the coach emphasizes
■ Training and instruction that enhances the ability and co-ordinated effort
by members, which in turn contributes to task accomplishment
■ Positive feedback that recognizes good performance
Transformational leadership
● Actions that transcend one’s own self-interests w/ the purpose of empowering, inspiring,
and challenging others to achieve a higher level of functioning
● Four I’s of transformational leadership
○ Idealized influence
■ promote trust and respect
■ Demonstration of personally held values
○ Inspirational motivation
 ■ Communicating high expectations
■ Inspiring and energizing others to go beyond minimal standards
○ Individualized consideration
■ Recognizing individual needs
○ Intellectual stimulation
■ Encouraging others to approach old problems in new ways
■ Contribute new/alternative solutions
Full Range of Leadership

Management by exception passive = leader waits for things to go wrong before helping
Management by exception active = leader searches for things that are done wrong, but not
what’s right
Contingent reward = uses rewards and recognition to motivate members
Criterion validity

Parenting
● Compelling evidence to suggest parents are key to developing a home environment that
fosters physical activity, healthy eating, and subjective well-being
● Parents’ role in fostering health-enhancing cognitions
○ Self-regulatory efficacy in adolescents is positively related to:
■ Physical activity and healthy eating
● Parent’s role in fostering subjective well-being
○ Life satisfaction is a key component of SWB
■ Positive parent-adolescent relationships and parental support are related
to adolescent SWB
Conceptual framework (2000)

Social identity leadership

● Fostering a sense of unity (we are all in this together)
5 Rs of shared leadership program
● Readying = why does “we” matter
● Reflecting = who are we
● Representing = what do we want to be
● Realizing = becoming what we want to be
● Reporting = are we what we want to be
Group processes and cohesion in sports:
Group dynamics
● Study of groups
● Energy, vitality, and activity characteristic of all groups
● Group is not
○ Statistical grouping (e.g. English tennis player)
○ Unorganised aggregate (e.g. football crowd)
○ A culture or subculture (e.g. french-canadians)
○ An association or organisation (e.g. amnesty international)
● Group is defined by
○ Common fate
○ Mutual benefit
○ Social structure
○ Interaction
○ Self categorisation
 ○ Collection of 2 or more individuals who:
■ Possess a common identity
■ Have common goals and objectives
■ Share a common fate
■ Exhibit structured patterns of interaction and models of communication
■ Hold common perceptions about group structure
■ Personally and instrumentally interdependent
■ Reciprocate interpersonal interaction
■ Consider themselves a group
Conceptual framework for the study of groups

Benefits of groups
● Two are better than one
● Many hands make light work
Group as a liability
● Too many people might be bad
Individual and team performance in sport
● Steiner’s model (1972)
○ Actual productivity = potential productivity - process losses
● Ringelmann effect (1913)
○ Phenomenon by which individual performance decreases as the number of
people in group increase
● Social loafing
 ○ Team members put in less than 100% effort due to motivation losses
○ Free rider effect
■ Put in no effort b/c they believe they are good enough
○ Sucker effect
Social facilitation
● Influence of presence of others on performance
● Two types of effects
○ Audience effects
■ Effect of having passive spectators observe
○ Coaction effects
■ Effect of having other people perform the same task at the same time
Elements of group structure
● Position in the group
○ Geographic location of person
● Status
○ Power, prestige, importance of person in group
○ Not always determined by position
○ High status individuals:
■ More frequently initiate group communications
■ More frequently receive group communications
■ Perceived more credible
○ According to studies, if status was very important, team cohesion dropped
● Group roles
○ Expectations for behaviour of an individual who occupies a specific position
■ Formal = directly prescribed
■ Informal = evolve through interpersonal interaction
 ○ Role conflict = athletes receive conflicting expectations from one or multiple
sources
○ Role ambiguity = lack of clarity about the responsibilities
○ Role efficacy = confidence in your ability to perform the role
■ Mastery experiences are strongest source of efficacy beliefs
○ Role acceptance = degree to which an athlete accepts their role

● Norms
○ Standards for behaviour that are expected of member of the group
○ Informational
■ Help members gain insights into what group considers appropriate
○ Integrational
■ Helps draw members into the group (i.e. conformity)
Mediator = intermediator variable that explains the relationship between the predictor or
independent variable and the outcome
Moderator = third variable that changes the nature of the relationship between 2 variables
(ex. Gender is a moderator if a fitness plan works well for girls, but not boys)
Cohesion
● Resultant of all forces acting on members to remain in the group

○ Attraction to group task = whether group member likes the task

○ Attraction to group social = whether member like the group activities socially
○ Group integration task = thoughts about the group’s performance
○ Group integration social = thoughts about the group socially
● Performance affects cohesion stronger than cohesion affects performance
● Both task and social cohesion is important
Groupthink
● Phenomenon that occurs when the desire for group consensus overrides important
information and can lead to poor decision making
● Symptoms
○ Illusion of invulnerability
○ Alternate opinions and warnings are ignored
○ Unquestioned belief in group’s inherent mortality
○ Stereotyped views of opposition
○ Direct pressures to conform
○ Self-censorship
○ Shared illusions of unanimty
○ Emergence of self-appointed mindguards
● Antecedents
○ High levels of cohesion
○ Insulated groups
○ Autocratic leadership
○ Homogenous groups

● How they can improve cohesion in sport teams

○ Environmental antecedents
■ Contractual responsibilities
■ Absence of pressure
■ Group size
○ Personal antecedents
■ Similarity of members
■ Member satisfaction
■ Member sacrifices
○ Leader antecedents
■ Clear goals and roles
■ Coach-athlete compatibility
■ Leadership style
○ Team antecedents
■ Prior team success
■ Shared negative experience
■ Communication among members
■ Role clarity/role acceptance
■ Having a team goal
■ Participation in formulation of team goals
■ Commitment to team goal
● Preventing groupthink
 ○ Solicit large number of alternatives
○ Preferred alternatives should be reconsidered
○ Rejected alternatives should be reconsidered
○ Input from experts outside group
○ Contingency plans developed
Conceptual model for team building

Group Based Physical activity interventions:

● Physical inactivity
○ Increased alarmingly over past century
○ Major cause of premature mortality
○ Associated w/ number of preventable unhealthy conditions
● Charles Darwin’s perspective
○ Animals benefited by living in close association
● Evolutionary psychology perspective
○ Group living is a fundamental aspect of human evolution
○ Those successful in seeking out and maintaining group support survived to
reproduce
○ Those unsuccessful were phased out
○ Evidence = study by Carron, Hausenblas, & Mack (1996)
■ People in group more likely to stay motivated than alone
■ Reveals that the quality of the group also affects behaviour
● Factors of harnessing intra-group composition
○ Alone vs. with others
■ Study by Wilcox et. al (1999)
● Reveals that Amongst older adults, most preferred to be alone
● Can suggest that older adults may not like being in a group with
younger people
● Paradoxes for belief that adults prefer to be alone
 ○ 2 prominent theories provide conceptual and empirical evidence that being w/
others is more innately natural than being alone
■ Self determination theory and belongingness theory \
○ Younger adults show preference for more social contexts
○ When people do exercise w/ others, their levels of adherence are markedly
superior than when exercising alone
● In general, people prefer to be in groups of the same gender
● Comparative fit = comparing yourself to various groups to see which ones you would fit
best in
● Normative fit = reflects behaviour people engage in; more likely to go to a group in which
you have similar interests to members in the group
● Social identity approach
○ Entitativity = when one perceives that a group is an actual cohesive group

● Group based physical activity for older adults (GOAL)

○ 3 armed RCT
○ 3 conditions
■ Similar age and gender
■ Similar age w/ mixed gender
■ Mixed age and gender
 ● Same age and gender groups led to more social cohesion w/in the group, provoking the
individuals to stay in the group
Aggression and Moral Behaviour:
Moral Behaviour
● The carrying out of an action that is deemed right or wrong
○ Learned through processes of reinforcement and modeling
● Engaged in these actions because they seemed it was the right thing to do
● Factors impacting development of moral behaviour in sports
○ Sport environment
■ Sports can provide an environment for moral practice and development
■ Athletes can learn rules and fair play in sport
■ Good moral behaviour (e.g. co-operation, loyalty, etc.) can develop
■ Can also provide opportunities to engage in unfair play, illegitimate
aggression and intimidation
■ Coaches act as role models
● Can stop disrespect and rule violation and encourage positive
moral behaviours in athletes
● Emphasized winning or immoral behaviours can lead to
unsportsmanlike conduct in athletes
○ Motivational climate
 ■ Athletes who have coaches that emphasize cooperation and learning
from past mistakes may engage in more prosocial behaviour
● Prosocial behaviour: behaviour intended to benefit or assist
another individual or team
■ Athletes who have coaches that emphasize winning and competition
among teammates may engage in more antisocial behaviour
● Antisocial behaviour: behaviour intended to harm or disadvantage
another individual or team
○ Goal orientation
■ Task orientation vs. ego orientation
● If ego orientation is high, athletes will more likely cheat and go
against moral behaviours
○ Team norms
■ Standards or expectations that influence team members’ behaviours
■ Teammates, coaches, and parents’ expectations have significant impact
on athletes’ moral behaviour
■ E.g. if it is normal for players on a team to yell at an official, then
individual players are more likely to yell at the official
Aggression
● Any overt verbal or physical act that is intended to injure another living organism either
psychologically or physically
● 4 components to aggression
○ It's a behaviour, not an emotion or feeling
○ Can be verbal or physical
○ Intended to physically or psychologically harm
○ Directed toward another living organism
● Modes of aggression
○ Physical
○ Verbal
○ Relational
■ E.g. spreading rumors
● Violent behaviour
○ Extreme act of physical aggression that bears no direct relationship to
competitive goals of sport
○ Relates to incidents of uncontrolled aggression outside the rules of sport
● Assertive behaviour
○ Forceful, vigorous, and legitimate actions w/ no intent to injure opponent
○ Unusual effort and energy expenditure
● Types of aggression
○ Instrumental aggression
■ Used as way to achieve goal
■ Injury is impersonal and designed to limit the effectiveness of opponent
■ Goal to win
■ No anger
 ○ Hostile aggression
■ Aggressive act is an end in and of itself
● Primary goal is to injure someone deliberately
■ Typically preceded by anger
■ Goal is to harm
● In each sport, there are written rules and unwritten rules
○ Thus, an act of aggression in one sport may be acceptable but the same act may
be unacceptable in another sport
■ E.g. fighting in hockey vs. fighting in rugby
● Aggressor usually believes their behaviour is appropriate whereas the victim usually
perceives the behaviour as aggressive
● Aggression can have consequences in sports for:
○ recipient of aggression
○ observer of aggression
○ The aggressor
● Theories of aggression
○ Instinct theory
■ Natural instinct to be aggressive (common to all people)
■ Aggression builds up, must inevitable be released
● Catharsis: release of aggressive tendencies through socially
acceptable means
○ Sport often identified as method of catharsis
■ No evidence for aggressive instinct
○ Physiological explanations
■ Aggression is physiological in nature
■ Blood chemistry
● Aggression linked to the hormone testosterone
● More prominent in animals than humans
○ frustration-Aggression hypothesis
■ Frustration -> aggressive drive -> aggressive behaviour
■ 2 key proposals:
● Frustration always leads to some form of aggression
● Aggression always is a result of frustration
■ Lack of support for this model
○ Social learning theory

■
 ■ Concerns w/ role models of aggression, and media portrayal
■ Rewards given to aggressive acts
○ Revised frustration-aggression theory
■ Frustration (failure, goal blockage) -> increased arousal (pain, anger) ->
socially learned cues signal appropriateness of aggression -> aggressive
behaviour
○ Moral disengagement
■ Extension of social learning to address moral behaviour
■ Involves cognitively reframing one’s actions to justify given behaviour
■ Eight mechanism of moral disengagement
● Moral justification
○ Fighting to protect my players
● Euphemistic labeling
○ Change language to make it seem less harmful
■ E.g. boys will be boys
● Advantageous comparison
○ Compare it to another event that may have been worse
● Displacement of responsibility
○ Shift the blame to other people
● Diffusion of responsibility
○ E.g. the group was doing it, so I did it too
● Distortion of consequences
○ “Well it wasn’t that bad”
● Dehumanization
○ Doing this because they were animals and they deserve it
● Attribution of blame
○ Aggressor claims that they were the victim of the event
● Fan aggression
○ Identify w/ teams
○ Crowd situations
○ Alcohol
○ Associated w/ aggression on the field
● Reducing aggression
○ Punishment and encouragement
■ Parents and coaches need to make sure that punishment for an
aggressive act outweighs the benefits
■ Parents and coaches also need to encourage and reward positive
behaviours
○ Educational interventions
■ Workshops teach coaches, parents, officials, kids etc. what aggression is,
the consequences of aggressive acts, and how to control aggression
Child and Youth development through sport:
● Reasons for participation
○ Fun
○ Demonstrate competence
○ Improve skills
○ exercise/fitness
○ affiliation/friendship
○ Competition
● Reasons for drop out
○ Other activities
○ Pressure
○ Dislikes the coach
○ Failure
○ Not fun
○ Overemphasis on winning
● Objectives of youth sport
○ Provide opportunities to be physically active to enhance physical and mental
health
○ Important for psychological development, providing opportunities to learn life
skills
○ Critical for learning of motor skills
● Developmental assets
○ Building blocks for human development
○ External assets
■ Comprise support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and
constructive use of time
○ Internal assets
■ Commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and
positive identity
● Features likely to foster positive youth assets
○ Physical and psychological safety
○ Appropriate structure
○ Supportive relationships
○ Opportunities to belong
○ Positive social norms
○ Support for efficacy and mattering
○ Skill building opportunities
○ Integration of family, school, and community efforts
● Five C’s of positive youth development
○ Competence
○ Character
○ Connection
○ Confidence
○ Caring
● Deliberate play = activities designed to maximize inherent enjoyment
● Deliberate practice = effective learning occurs through highly structured activities
● Early specialization = high amounts of deliberate practice and low amounts of deliberate
play
● Early specialization and deliberate practice considerations
○ Overemphasis on deliberate practice and early specialization may lead to
overtraining
○ Early specialization can result in harmful emotional and psychological
development
○ Specialization may lead to disappointment and discouragement
○ Early specialization and increased focus on deliberate practice can be effective in
producing elite performers
● Role of Peers
○ Complex
○ Multiple relationships and context
○ Dynamic
○ Positive and negative elements
○ Multiple types and elements of relationships
■ Peer acceptance, status, popularity
■ Friendship
■ Social support
○ Sport friendship quality
■ Related to:
● positive feelings towards physical activity
● Motivation (commitment)
● Physical self-worth
● Role of coaches
○ Professional model
■ Sport as a business (winning, making money)
○ Developmental model
■ Sport facilitating (positive physical, psychological, and social
development)
○ When coaching young athletes:
■ Look for things that are right and give praise
■ Only give sincere praise
■ Have realistic expectations
■ Reward effort as much as outcome
■ Reward technique, not just outcome
■ Focus on teaching and skill development
■ Modify activities to child’s level
■ Modify rules to maximize action/participation
■ Create a positive environment
■ Be enthusiastic
● Role of Parents
 ○ Parents are socializers of children’s experiences in youth sport
■ Providers of experience
■ Interpreters of experience
■ Role models
● Socializers influence choice of behaviour through their own beliefs
and behaviours
○ Positive influence
■ Parent’s participation
■ Encouragement
■ Task goal orientation
■ Disciplining their child for misbehaving in practices
■ Being good fair-play role models
■ Parent meetings
● Educating parents about positive child development through sport
● Communicating philosophy
■ Coach-parent communication liaison
● Parent or assistant coach
○ Negative influence
■ Outcome based love/attention
■ Coaching child from sidelines
■ Encouraging cheating
■ Saying negative things to opposing players
■ Parents fighting w/ other parents or coaches
■ “Problem Parents”
● Disinterested parents
● Overcritical
● Parents who scream from bench
● Sideline coaches
● Overprotective parents
● Stress and burnout in child’s sport
○ Does sport necessarily place excessive stress on youth?
■ No; compared to other common activities, anxiety level is similar
○ Can sport place excessive stress on youth?
■ Yes; consider person <-> situation
● Personality and sport climate
Aging and Physical Activity Involvement
● Aging canadian population
○ Persons over 85 is fastest growing segment of society
○ Increased lifespan no guarantee high quality of life
○ Serious risk of being unhealthy or in complete dependence = morbidity
○ Physical inactivity may cause decrease in quality of life
● Aging and physical activity
○ Physical activity can help older adults be physically and psychologically healthy
○ Study this to understand how we can help older adults be healthy
 ○ Guidelines
■ Accumulate at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic
physical activity per week, in bouts of 10 minutes or more
■ Add muscle and bone strengthening activities using major muscle groups
at least 2 days per week
■ Those w/ poor mobility should perform physical activity to enhance
balance and prevent falls
● Most popular activities = walking, gardening, home exercise, swimming, dancing
● Benefits
○ Increases cardiovascular function
○ Decreases cardiovascular-disease risk factors
○ Increases muscle mass and strength
○ Improves bone health and decreased risk of osteoporosis
○ Improves balance and posture stability
○ Improves flexibility
○ Improves psychological health/mood states
○ Decrease in negative psychological states
● Cognitive and physical decline w/ advancing age
○ Aging results in declines of cognitive and physical performance
○ Conflicting evidence suggests decrease may not be just due to aging
● Compensation model of skill maintenance
○ Although individual skill components may decline with age, it’s possible for
overall performance to remain the same due to increased reliance on other
aspects of performance
○ Refining a skill as you grow older
● Selective maintenance model
○ Expert performance in skilled domains is maintained in very specific capacities
○ A lot of time spent on the sport that helps maintain the skill level of an athlete;
decreases the rapid decline in their skills
● Cognitive and motor skills more resistant to age-related decline then physiological
factors
● The Masters Athlete: A model of successful aging
○ Competition for older athletes
○ Increasing popularity of masters-level competition
○ Unique population that defies stereotypical views of aging
○ Maintain high levels of physical and cognitive competency
○ Motives
■ To be physically fit
■ To meet new friends
○ These athletes have higher self-esteem, better sleep patterns, and less physical
problems than non-active individuals
○ They view participation as effective way to deal w/ stress and improve mood
● Barriers to physical activity
○ Lack of motivation
 ○ Health problems
○ Fatigue
○ Ageism
■ Discimination against older adults because of their age
■ Predominantly negative attitude towards aging in North America
■ Stereotypes
■ Implicit priming
● Activates or reinforces belief w/o conscious awareness
● Older adults are continuously exposed to negative stereotypes
through media and social interactions
■ Disidentification
● Reconceptualizing self-image to remove values associated w/ a
domain
● Determinants
○ Demographic and biological factors
■ Males are more active than females as age increases
■ Socioeconomic status (SES)
● Social position and educational level linked to lifelong physical
activity
● High SES = more likely to be physically active
○ Behavioural attributes
■ Small relationship between childhood physical activity and older adult
physical activity levels
■ Relationship between physical activity and some preventative health
behaviours is not clear in older adults
○ Social and cultural factors
■ Social support by spouse, peers, and physicians can affects levels of
Physical activity
■ Exercise group members can influence PA
● Cohesive groups have better attendance and adherence rates
● Exercise leaders influence quality of participant’s exercise
■ Cultural beliefs can impede involvement
■ Characterizations of female older adults as fragile or delicate particularly
disadvantage women
○ Physical environmental factors
■ 5-15% of older adults report environmental factors negatively affects
participation
■ Difficulties = getting to facilities, costs, unappealing activities, and
inconvenient scheduling
○ Psychological factors
■ Correlates of physical activity in adults
■ Enjoyment, perceived health benefits, self-efficacy
● Individuals w/ higher self-efficacy about physical activity more
likely to initiate and continue participation
 ● Self-efficacy and participation have reciprocal relationship
● Successful aging model (1997, Rowe and Kahn’s)
○ Absence of chronic illness
○ Maintenance of cognitive and physical functioning
○ Active engagement w/ life
● maintaining/increasing physical activity
○ Positive role models
○ Appropriate types and levels of activities
○ Build and maintain self-efficacy through consistent participation
○ Do not undermine or belittle individuals’ efforts
○ Understand individuals’ reasons for physical activity